France: Education, but no future

Imagine going to school every day fearing your parents might be arrested when they come to pick you up. Imagine dreading the day you turn 18 because the country you see as your homeland may try to kick you out. This is the reality for thousands of children of illegal immigrant families in France, who have much more to worry about than just getting good grades.

By law all children under the age of 18 are entitled to a state education, the children of illegal immigrants included. They are exempt from deportation until they come of age.

The charity Education Sans Frontières (Education Without Borders) estimates that there are about 100,000 such children in the French education system.

These children, who may even have been born in France, learn the language, make friends and appear little different to ordinary French kids. But they know that once they finish school they will face endless legal battles to try to obtain citizenship and be forced to work in illegal, low paid jobs. And they constantly run the risk of being sent back to their "homeland" - a country which in some cases they know almost nothing about.

Education Sans Frontières is raising concern about one particular tactic being adopted by immigration officials - sending in police to arrest illegal immigrants as they arrive to pick their children up at the school gates.

Françoise Dumont, deputy president of the Human Rights League in France, says that the one positive upshot of this is that it really brings home the plight of illegal immigrants to French parents. "A lot of people now realise that a lot of these illegal immigrants are the fathers and mothers of their children's friends at school. It's because of these schoolchildren that people are changing their minds," she says.